One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools.
It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to mediocre high schools sounds like an excellent way to improve the average quality of schools. This goes into a whole discussion of whether we should concentrate gifted students or disperse them, but that's another topic.
What I like about this system is that it helps a population that even the most altruistically inclined admissions office overlooks: the unprepared. I've met my fair share of students who are brilliant, hard workers but just do not play the game. Whether that's because of ignorance, fear of failure or some other factor, I do not know. They exist at every level; I've seen them for college, for tech jobs, probably for high school admissions. If someone could build a system that scoops up these people, they'd find quite a few gems in the pile.
> One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school.
Where I live students don't have any choice in which high school to go to. You go to your local high school, unless your family is wealthy and you can afford private schools.
I would assume this is the case for 95% of Americans. You must have had a different experience?
My family was not wealthy so I did not get a choice whether to "play the game". Actually, I don't even know what game you are taking about.
Consider northern Tarrant county of Texas which is the highest density school district area I have heard of.
Houses in Southlake cost about 20% more per square foot and tend to be substantially larger than all neighboring areas except Colleyville. That creates exclusivity largely due to magnified wealth that has grown up around the school.
Now that the population in the area has substantially swollen competition among the school districts has increased irrespective of wealth, though wealth remains an influential factor. When a student can live mere miles from various schools in more than two school districts, in some rare cases 4 districts, there is incentive to consider among the choices even though it’s supposed to limited by geography.
To complicate that further there are state funded charter school systems that have competitive admission requirements and ignore geography.
Yes there are also private schools as well. In many places private schools exist to provide wealthy children a superior education. That does not apply in the north Tarrant area where there are so many excellent public schools to choose from and the wealthy ones are among the best in the nation. In this area private schools exist only to provide education public schools cannot, such as religious sponsored education.
>Where I live students don't have any choice in which high school to go to. You go to your local high school, unless your family is wealthy and you can afford private schools.
You must never have bought a house. If you look on any real estate website, you'll find the ratings for local schools. Some towns grow or shrink on the quality of their schools. School districts are as important as cars in explaining the geometry of modern suburbia.
My city had a school choice program. Your local school was required to accept you, but out of dustrict schools were free to impose additional restrictions. Most used a lottery, but a few (at least 1 I waa considering) would look at at an applicants grade and test scores and make an admission decision based on that.
In the twenty-first century US as in thirteenth century china.
昔孟母，择邻处。
(I would claim that people, in the time of de Vos as in the time of Mencius' mother, don't vote with their feet to choose schools as much as choose their childrens' classmates, and perhaps especially the parents of their children's classmates, but I'm a cynic.)
"94027 children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a 94301, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the 95112s and 95023s."
The game I'm referring to is whatever game you need to play to gain capital, social, economic or otherwise. Whether that's applying to colleges and all of the requisite application fluff; the technical interview game or the optimal high school game. And while these games are significantly easier to play if you come from means, I know plenty of low income students who play the game far better than your elite private school types.
I’ve had plenty of discussions with people on how they plan to move from starter homes to homes in more affluent areas so their kids can mingle with richer kids and go to their schools.
It might not need to, as long as median income does. The saying of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and “you are the company you keep” rings very true in my experience. Just being around the kids of successful parents should help in opening more doors.
"If someone could build a system that scoops up these people, they'd find quite a few gems in the pile."
I was surprised at the amount of people that had aced the military ASVAB test when I showed up at basic training. Not that acing that is similar to acing the SAT, but it's not easy either. Some of them were signed up for pretty menial jobs too.
Really? I took the ASVAB when I was looking for ways to fund my college education and considered doing Army Reserve. The only question I had to pause on was one about manual transmissions (I'd never driven stick before and couldn't remember how the gears were numbered on my Schwinn). The recruiter claimed to be blown away by the fact that I scored so high on the test. I was never actually given my score. I wonder if those people claiming to have aced the ASVAB were bragging with nothing to back it up. Or alternately, that some recruiters routinely tell their recruits they aced the test to help seal the deal.
They weren't claiming. Your scores are all posted on the wall in basic training.
I walked the dorms and saw ~5 aces or very near aces out of maybe 200ish total people's scores.
It's just somewhat odd because starting out as an E1 isn't terribly lucrative. It doesn't surprise me that 5 of 200 do that well. It surprises me that 5 of 200 that do so well actually enlist.
I'm curious how the Montgomery GI Bill changes that calculus.
My distant understanding is that a not-insignificant number of people join the military because this will give them a full ride in college. They can't make much more than the Army pays with a high school diploma, and they can't afford college without either crippling debt or something like the GI Bill.
But I don't have any facts here, just going off what an old friend told me about how he ended up in Iraq in the first place.
Not just the GI Bill, but the benefits in general are a huge motivator. Where else can an 18 year old newlywed with a baby be assured that they can provide for their family?
To get back to your point on the MGIB - these days the Post-9/11 GI Bill is where it's at. With the Post-9/11, a veteran can actually have public university tuition paid, plus a books stipend, plus a housing allowance (meaning they can actually afford to live in addition to finishing school). I didn't enlist for the GI Bill, but when I got out and realized the incredible opportunity I had, I just couldn't turn it down.
Sure. It's just those scores (or the implied intelligence) could probably get you into programs like the one where the Navy pays you a stipend while at college, and pays for college...before you join the military, as an officer. The other branches have similar programs.
There's quite a lot of crap to go through before you get to use that GI bill money :)
That lot of crap was why I didn't follow through on enlisting—I was looking for funding for the next semester which I had hoped enlisting in the army reserve would do, but it turned out it would be at least six months before I saw any college benefits and after six months, I could do just as well on my own.
It's just as well because had I done this, I would have been in the reserve for the first gulf war and been sent to Iraq, something that I would have had no desire to do (in general, army reserve would have been a very poor fit for me).
In the military as bottom of the rung enlisted people, yes. I feel okay saying that, since I was there, and I was one. I had, er, blown some earlier opportunities. It's not an easy life for the first couple of years, and the pay is terrible at first.
> In the military as bottom of the rung enlisted people, yes.
Some people just want to get stuck into the work and tactics rather than all the fuss of being an officer! Being a private soldier in many units can be an extremely challenging and rewarding experience. Yes the pay isn't great for people with other opportunities, but money isn't everything in life.
I know many people who could easily commission but want to stay operators because that's what they enjoy.
> I mean bottom of the rung, E1. You can do 2 years of community college and enter a couple of ranks higher.
But...you can't. At least, not that would show up at Basic. The higher grade you get for sufficient vo/tech or collegiate study prior to enlistment is applied after graduating from Basic. AFAIK,that's true even for the programs where you enlist with guaranteed OCS after Basic, you still are an E-1 when you go to Basic though you are administratively promoted to E-5 at OCS.
Right, and all the programs I referred to are also guaranteed promotion after Basic as well. But you'll still be an E-1 in Basic and so if you are looking at some outstanding scores on something posted for E-1s in Basic, well, it's possible those E-1s are people who enlisted with a guarantee of higher grade on successful completion of Basic, not starting at the bottom except insofar as everyone enlisting starts at the bottom in Basic.
Apparently the navy considers scouting to be roughly equivalent to an AA.
"Scouting
Provide evidence of successful completion of Eagle Scout or the Girl Scout Gold Award requirements and you are entitled to be enlisted in pay-grade E-3."
Sure, but the statement seemed to allude that the incentive was gaining rank, not taking the easiest route.
>You can do 2 years of community college and enter a couple of ranks higher.
Point being, if your goal is to maximize rank the fastest, it doesn't make sense to go to community college for two years. If two people consider enlisting at the same time but one defers to community college, that deferment will likely mean they are lower rank/seniority than the person who joined without any additional school.[1] Both will still have the same enlistment term, but the non-deferring person would be considered senior because they also have more time in service and time in grade.
If the intent is to go to school to qualify for a commission, that's a different matter.
[1] e.g., Person1 joins immediately, Person2 joins two years after community college. Person1 is at least an E3 in most cases and likely and E4 (rare cases E5) plus two years time in service and more time in grade when Person2 joins. Person2 comes in at an E3 with zero days time in service/time in grade. (Time in service/grade are applicable to gaining the next rank on a scoring system). Meaning Person1 is more competitive for the next rank, with all other things equal
5/200 is 97th percentile, roughly speaking. But I would guess that acing the test is something that general population would be able to do at 80th percentile, maybe 90th (although I'm a bad judge of such things and a quick google search reveals nothing elucidating).
> It surprises me that 5 of 200 that do so well actually enlist.
I’m generalizing here, but: No matter what their score was (high or low), most people are going to take the ASVAB because they want to join the military and reap the benefits of it (i.e. TRICARE, GI bill). We can’t forget that military granted health insurance covers around 3-4% of the total insured (US Census, 2019, p.3)[1]. It is also a heavily road traveled road out of poverty for many POC and low-income students. There’s a reason you see more military recruiters in counties, states, and especially schools which have a overall lower income level. But we must also remember we do not know where their true interests lie. Or if they’d be able to — or even want to — handle efficiently the responsibility of being in a higher education setting as opposed to the more structural hierarchy of the military.
However, this does not take away from the fact that some of those 5 people may have a certain given ability to excel in a field that only the military provides. They may want to take that skill all the way to an Officer position instead of working up a corporate ladder. Say geography for example. Someone may have an educational knack for it and perhaps they change their military career goals toward something more technical (cyber defense, intel) instead of labor intensive (infantry). Either of these career choices would only be possible in a military setting. (Lucrative military contractor and paid mercenary jobs are moot points for this discussion.)
In the end, I do not think the ASVAB should be looked at as a moment of enlightenment the same way the SAT would be. They are serving two different purposes and a majority of people sitting in the recruiters office already have their mind made up; it’s now just a matter of figuring out which base you’re attending for training and how long it’ll last.
I think you’re missing a major point: Not everybody wants to go to college. Yes there are ROTC programs and you’ll be commissioned as an officer after 4 years BUT you still have to attend school.
If someone does not want to attend higher ed, telling them about a stipend and quick ranking will fall on deaf ears. They’re sitting in the recruiters office to find an escape from their current situation and reality. I’d wager most kids do not want to be told “stay in this town for 4 more years and then it’ll be better. Trust me.”
They want to get out NOW and start a new life and a new career. Not be told what they want to do is wrong.
Those programs were one example. There are other paths, like trade schools, journeyman programs, etc. I'm not missing the point, I talked to some of them. They mostly just didn't know what else to do.
Basically all of it to confirm the notion (in the comment I replied to) that there is talent to be scooped up. Don't let a military recruiter be the only person that offers them something.
Isn’t the United States still heavily segregated???
Take a look at the data on Milwaukee, Detroit and Chicago for example.
As Clarence Thomas has mentioned often “affirmative action” just covers up larger injustices like underfunded public schools and housing discrimination.
In a lot of states, we have Democratic big cities and Republican towns with a Republican state legislature.
Guess which areas in the state get the most funding for their schools —- it’s NOT the cities with the most people per square mile.
> It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to mediocre high schools sounds like an excellent way to improve the average quality of schools. This goes into a whole discussion of whether we should concentrate gifted students or disperse them, but that's another topic.
In practice in Texas when I saw this the effect was very limited, because the best classes were largely full of the would-normally-be-in-other-schools magnet students, and didn't have a ton of uptake from the students in that school's regular geographic region. And then they gave bonus GPA points for taking those classes, so cracking the top 10% as a non-magnet-program student was harder still.
Having the classes available was certainly helpful for a small number of students who took them who may not have had access to them otherwise, and concentrating the magnet programs let the district offer more a few more advanced classes than they might have otherwise, but it also somewhat negated any opportunity-spreading effects of the 10% rule.
Any "top nn%" rule asks for another form of toxic gaming of the system.
At least back around the turn of the century, in Arizona, the state universities gave a full tuition waiver for the top 25 or 33% of the graduating class. (Not sure if they still do) This seems at its face to be a very inclusive goal-- you'd make the program accessible to students regardless of finances.
But some schools were so aggressive on the AP and other 'weighted' programmes (A=5.0, B=4.0, etc.), that the valedictorian would have something like a 4.6 GPA, and even a standard 4.0 might not clear the top 25%. It would not be enough just to be an excellent student, you had to explicitly load up on weighted courses-- and of course, there were no weighted fine arts or vocational courses.
This leads to a bunch of toxic outcomes. A straight A student would rank below someone with an A/B record, because she chose the right courses to take. There was pressure to choose the courses which bumped the GPA as opposed to the ones which fit interests or potential commercial utility, which I suspect would lead to resource starvation and classes cancelled due to undersubscription.
That's not a problem with the admission system, that's a problem with the scholarship being underfunded. If 33% is missing people, go to 50%. This idea that college admissions should be competitive is absolutely toxic
> This goes into a whole discussion of whether we should concentrate gifted students or disperse them, but that's another topic.
One of the common complaints higher performing students have is that they are dispersed in their classes and very bored as the teacher teaches to the lowest common denominator. Now, that is classrooms, not schools, but you have schools that try to accommodate gifted students in their own tracks and...why are they even bothering putting them in the same schools?
This is playing out at a massive scale with virtual learning. Large amounts of kids in the gifted program and generally “smart” kids have been pulled a week in. there is little value in keeping them together with kids below their academic level in this environment since all the social aspects are gone.
UT Austin is allowed to accept only the top 6%. It also creates weird incentives for students. A friend of mine works in the front office of a local high school and she knows a lot of students who have dropped electives such as band because it lowers their grade point. In Austin area schools AP courses are weighted on a 6.0 scale which makes the problem worse if you want broaden your education and take non-weighted classes.
Yeah this is a serious defect in the high school system. Other than our valedictorian with an Eidadic memory got too marks in all classes, the rest of us who did band, a non honors course, all 4 years suffered from not getting a the weighted boost and ended up ranked a few places lower than our peers who got the same 1 or 2 Bs but took honors theatre or honors debate even if they actually liked band or track team better.
The similar issue repeats itself in college where employers lkke McKinsey and Goldman prefilter for the 3.8+ gpa kids as a proxy for intellect/hard work. But this discourages the career minded students from going for the hardest classes with tough but intellectually stimulating professors and comes again down to who can figure out how to best cherry pick for easy grades.
That's the reason I like having some classes as pass or fail. It really encourages students to take some classes that are out of their comfort zone and try something different. Else they'll stick to the optimal path and might miss out on some things they might have been good at.
>getting good students to go to mediocre high schools sounds like an excellent way to improve the average quality of schools
I think there's also a lot of value in giving the local students some peers that are more serious about education too. Ideally every school should offer a non-distracting environment for motivated students
It used to be the case (when I was in High School) that 10% meant ticket to UT Austin, in fact a huge fraction of students at UT Austin were 10% students.
I found this policy excellent, it meant I had a bunch of colleagues from really small towns with no resources and this was clearly life changing for those attending college.
It felt like everything college is supposed to be (even if imperfect).
A lot do make it in, but some of the programs are limited in how many they can take. Which sucks, because some of the alternatives don't offer much of a campus experience...like UT Arlington.
This is also how the UC system works: the top 9% (IIRC) students are eligible for guaranteed admission, but they are not necessarily admitted to the campus or program of their choice, so you might not get to go to eg Berkeley.
Do they take into account what you intend to major in? Not all UC campuses offer all degrees. If you are in that 9% and want to major in, say, mathematics, will they try to make sure that you get into one of the campuses that offers that?
Why are there any majors that are only offered at a single school? That seems like a much bigger problem than people being able to pick which school they want to go to.
You could have a college major in any possible area of academic inquiry, which means the number of potential college majors is unlimited. Each school can only have so many faculty and they have to balance various factors when deciding who to hire. More resources dedicated to offering new majors might mean less resources going to popular majors that are overenrolled.
Also, the colleges within UT can have much more stringent requirements. You're not getting into the engineering or business colleges with a mediocre background.
So, as outcomes for kids are hugely affected by the school they go to, you'd like to take kids OUT of schools where they're expected to do really well and put them into schools where they probably are not going to, in the hope they slightly improve grades for other students. I'm sorry, but I really don't think you've thought this through.
I'm not refuting anything! What I'm saying is if you claim to know how to change and improve education you better have some evidence to support your claim. As to why I feel like I can comment..my father has been an education consultant for the past 30 years, before that he was a teacher, my sister is a teacher and so was my mum. What you're espousing is an ideological approach that you'd like to be true. Why not claim its true, I mean, you're smart right, why would you need evidence to backup what you're saying?
I think an interesting result of this has increased the snobbishness/elitism of UT Grads. Older UT Alums (prior to the 10% rule) are pretty chill people, but the newer ones are universally entitled jerks.
It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to mediocre high schools sounds like an excellent way to improve the average quality of schools. This goes into a whole discussion of whether we should concentrate gifted students or disperse them, but that's another topic.
What I like about this system is that it helps a population that even the most altruistically inclined admissions office overlooks: the unprepared. I've met my fair share of students who are brilliant, hard workers but just do not play the game. Whether that's because of ignorance, fear of failure or some other factor, I do not know. They exist at every level; I've seen them for college, for tech jobs, probably for high school admissions. If someone could build a system that scoops up these people, they'd find quite a few gems in the pile.